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solarbirdMost of this is sabotage, including yet another shutdown by the Feds of Cascadian testing - in this case specifically testing Bill Gates is paying to have done as part of his massive work against the pandemic, and the Feds shipping us unusable supplies. (As always, Cascadia Now.) But there's lots of other fun stuff, like Eric Trump saying the whole pandemic is bullshit made up by Democrats to keep his father from holding rallies. Shit like that.
- ‘Selfish and Gross’: Illinois Natives Plot Bar Sprees in Wisconsin
- Eric Trump tells FOX that COVID-19 is invented by Democrats and will all vanish overnight the day after the election, presumably like so many ginned-up Republican investigations of Clinton and Obama.
- Fed shipment of Q-tip-style coronavirus swabs puzzles Washington state officials, latest wrinkle in supply woes
- False health claims circulate about wearing masks during pandemic
- JetBlue’s Founder Helped Fund A Stanford Study That Said The Coronavirus Wasn’t That Deadly
- A noose, an ax and Trump-inspired insults: Anti-lockdown protesters ratchet up violent rhetoric
- FDA halts Bill Gates coronavirus testing program [EDITOR'S NOTE: See also the Federal history, documented here and elsewhere, about stopping Cascadian efforts to do widespread testing and alert others. This is intentional sabotage.]
- Record number of COVID-19 cases reported Saturday in Wisconsin, with 502 infections
- Amid reports of White House clashes with CDC, experts raise alarms about lack of coronavirus screening at airports
- House Republican introduces bill to give meatpacking plants liability shield
- Sweden’s Relaxed Approach to COVID-19 Isn’t Working
- Alaska legislator compares pandemic safety measures at Capitol to Nazi treatment of Jews [EDITOR: Amazingly, it's even worse than this headline implies]
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‘Selfish and Gross’: Illinois Natives Plot Bar Sprees in Wisconsin
Jonathan Ballew, The Daily Beast
May 15, 2020
https://news.yahoo.com/selfish-gross-illinois-natives-plot-073550208.html
When the Wisconsin state Supreme Court struck down the governor’s extended stay-at-home order in a bitterly partisan ruling on Wednesday, crowds descended on bars throughout the state, and local officials raced to impose or reaffirm restrictions meant to keep COVID-19 infections at bay.
Meanwhile, residents of neighboring Illinois saw opportunity.
The Daily Beast spoke with several Illinois residents who shared plans to travel this weekend to Wisconsin. While they generally said they were aware of coronavirus-related travel concerns, they echoed a simmering national debate about how long economies can be placed in hibernation.
Oh, and they were anxious to feel something again.
Anthony Hersick, 22, from Ingleside, Illinois, said he and some friends were planning on crossing the border to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, to head to the bars and clubs in the area. “I’m a little worried [about COVID-19], but we are here to support our friends,” he told The Daily Beast. “As long as we follow the rules, that’s good enough for me.”
Hersick said he and his friends were close with some of the local DJs in Lake Geneva and they wanted to financially support them and the local businesses in the area that were struggling.
Kat Schimian, 32, is an Illinois resident and health-care worker who planned on taking a trip to Wisconsin this weekend with a group of friends by motorcycle. She said they would practice social distancing and didn’t want to enter any establishments that are overly crowded. “I want to enjoy my summer, but safely,” she said.
Schimian mentioned that she had recently been tested to make sure she was not a carrier of the virus. She said there was a balance between keeping others safe and allowing people to choose mitigated risk.
Public health experts have repeatedly warned that tests are not always reliable and can sometimes produce false negatives. And people can still contract COVID-19 after being tested while remaining asymptomatic.
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ALT-immigration
twitter.com/ALT_uscis
17 May 2020
https://twitter.com/ALT_uscis/status/1261920164037222402
Dumdum twitter.com/EricTrump accusing them democrats of creating the pandemic and the lockdown to deprive his dad from holding rallies and that all will disappear after nov 3rd.
[EMBEDDED VIDEO]
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Fed shipment of Q-tip-style coronavirus swabs puzzles Washington state officials, latest wrinkle in supply woes
By Lewis Kamb
Seattle Times staff reporter
May 16, 2020
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/fed-shipment-of-q-tip-style-coronavirus-swabs-puzzle-washington-state-officials-latest-wrinkle-in-supply-woes/
Earlier this week, workers at a state health department warehouse in Tumwater, Thurston County, expected to receive a large shipment of 68,000 nasal swabs to help expand coronavirus testing in Washington. Instead, they received a surprise substitution: Dozens of boxes marked “Comforts For Baby Cotton Swabs” packed with what appeared to be thousands of Q-tips.
Typically unsuitable for medical tests, the Q-tip-style swabs prompted Reed Schuler, a senior adviser to Gov. Jay Inslee, to place a head-scratching call to the White House coronavirus task force.
“I asked, ‘What exactly is this shipment we’re getting?’ And they said, ‘Oh sorry, ignore the packaging. You were supposed to get a memo explaining that shipment,’ ” Schuler said Friday.
The task force later sent a memo from U.S. Cotton, LLC, explaining the swabs actually were produced specifically for nasal specimen collection.
“The packaging used (comforts for baby cotton swabs) for a portion of the initial FEMA production does not accurately reflect the contents,” a memo signed by company president and CEO John B. Nims said. “Be assured that the printed packaging does contain the F.D.A. approved sterilized polyester spun swab for specimen collection of COVID-19.”
But the way the swabs arrived in Washington this week — 22,000 in bulk, packed into the scores of mislabeled boxes — puzzled state health workers, Schuler said. The nasopharyngeal (NP) and nasal swabs widely used for specimen collection typically come individually wrapped in sterile packaging to avoid contamination.
“Having boxes full of swabs in bulk raises questions about sterility and whether we can use them at all,” Schuler said.
...
But so far, Washington has received only about 60,000 swabs halfway through May — roughly 10% of the amount Adm. Brett Giroir, the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Department’s assistant secretary, has pledged to deliver by month’s end. Along with the same promise made for June, the federal agency also agreed to send enough transport media — chemicals used to preserve specimens during shipment to labs — to cover about three-quarters of the promised swabs.
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False health claims circulate about wearing masks during pandemic
By ARIJETA LAJKA
May 15, 2020
https://apnews.com/afs:Content:8949990001
CLAIM: Wearing a mask can cause hypercapnia, and lead viruses to travel into the brain.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. There’s no evidence that wearing a mask causes hypercapnia, or that masks can trap the virus and lead to an infection in the brain. Hypercapnia occurs when there is too much carbon dioxide in the bloodstream. Mild cases can lead to issues such as headache and anxiety; severe cases can interfere with breathing.
THE FACTS: Dozens of posts circulated on social media this week claiming that wearing a mask would cause more harm than going without one.
“By wearing a mask, the exhaled viruses will not be able to escape and will concentrate in the nasal passages, enter the olfactory nerves and travel into the brain,” several false posts on Facebook and Twitter stated.
One Facebook post featured the quote and falsely noted that wearing masks over a period can cause hypercapnia.
“Wearing masks causes hypercapnia which causes severe respiratory problems which will be BLAMED on 2nd wave of C O Vid not the masks,” the post stated. The post featured an illustration from Wikimedia Commons, which was labeled as showing “carbon dioxide toxicity.”
Social media posts displaying the illustration also had a statement edited onto the graphic: “This is hypercapnia. It can be caused by rebreathing your own exhaled CO2 by wearing a mask continually.”
There’s no evidence that wearing a mask will trap the virus in the nose and lead to an infection in the brain, said Sarah Stanley, associate professor of infectious diseases and vaccinology at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health.
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JetBlue’s Founder Helped Fund A Stanford Study That Said The Coronavirus Wasn’t That Deadly
A Stanford whistleblower complaint alleges that the controversial John Ioannidis study failed to disclose important financial ties and ignored scientists’ concerns that their antibody test was inaccurate.
Stephanie M. Lee
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on May 15, 2020
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/stanford-coronavirus-neeleman-ioannidis-whistleblower
A highly influential coronavirus antibody study was funded in part by David Neeleman, the JetBlue Airways founder and a vocal proponent of the idea that the pandemic isn’t deadly enough to justify continued lockdowns.
That’s according to a complaint from an anonymous whistleblower, filed with Stanford University last week and obtained by BuzzFeed News, about the study conducted by the famous scientist John Ioannidis and others. The complaint cites dozens of emails, including exchanges with the airline executive while the study was being conducted.
The study — released as a non-peer-reviewed paper, or preprint, on April 17 — made headlines around the world with a dramatic finding: Based on antibodies in thousands of Silicon Valley residents’ blood samples, the number of coronavirus infections was up to 85 times higher than believed. This true infection count was so high that it would drive down the virus’s local fatality rate to 0.12%–0.2% — far closer to the known death rate for the flu.
Almost immediately, the study became a flashpoint in the increasingly politicized debate over whether and how to reopen the economy. Although many scientists assailed its methods, leading the authors to post a revision nearly two weeks later, it was trumpeted by conservative media to support a growing theory: that fears of the coronavirus are overblown.
“Most of the population has minimal risk, in the range of dying while you’re driving from home to work and back,” Ioannidis said on the Fox News show Life, Liberty & Levin, a few days after the study’s release.
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But Ioannidis and his coauthors did not disclose that the study was funded in part by Neeleman. “Concern that the authors were affected by a severe conflict of interest is unavoidable,” states the complaint, which was submitted to Stanford’s research compliance office by an anonymous whistleblower involved with the research.
And emails cited within the complaint also suggest that the study’s authors disregarded warnings raised by two Stanford professors who tried to verify the accuracy of the antibody test used. The pair of scientists ultimately refused to put their names on the study because, they told the lead researchers, they could not stand by the test results. The complaint suggests that Neeleman “potentially used financial incentives to secure cooperation from” one of these scientists, who told colleagues by email that she was “alarmed” by aspects of the antibody test’s performance.
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A noose, an ax and Trump-inspired insults: Anti-lockdown protesters ratchet up violent rhetoric
By Katie Shepherd and Moriah Balingit
May 15, 2020 at 3:26 a.m. PDT
Rain drizzled as a crowd of about 200 people gathered in front of the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing on Thursday to urge Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) to lift coronavirus restrictions. The protesters — some carrying guns, few wearing masks — held up signs that said, “Stop Whitmer now,” and, “Dangerous safety is better than safe tyranny.”
Near the capitol steps, one man had strung an American flag onto a fishing rod. Below the flag, a brunette doll dangled from a noose tied to the pole. When another protester reached to grab the doll, a fight broke out. A video captured people wrestling over the flag and doll, shoving one another and shouting. Nearby, two people struggled over an ax.
“Where is capitol police right now?” a woman can be heard shouting into a microphone in a video published by MLive. “We have an issue, can we have the police come up to the steps please? Where are the cops?”
Violent rhetoric appears to be increasingly common among people protesting stay-at-home orders amid a coronavirus pandemic that has killed 85,000 and sickened 1.4 million people in the United States. At another Thursday protest in Commack, N.Y., Long Island protesters waved Trump 2020 banners and one held a sign that read, “Hang Fauci. Hang Gates. Open all our states.”
...
Trump has also thrown his support behind the anti-lockdown protesters, who often sport flags, signs, banners, hats and T-shirts promoting his reelection campaign. With his campaign rallies suspended for the time being, some of the protests have become pseudo-rallies for his most devoted followers.
...
“I think it’s awesome that [Wisconsin] is opened back up and I think Michigan should do the same thing,” she said. “I believe that the virus is real but it’s not as bad as they make it out to be.”
On May 1, Trump called the armed protesters who took guns into the Michigan Capitol building “very good people.” He has often challenged the governors who have implemented stringent social distancing policies, calling to “LIBERATE” states like Michigan, Virginia and Minnesota.
Trump has also cheered on states that have chosen to partially reopen, despite not meeting federal guidelines that call for a phased-in return to normalcy as the outbreak eases over time.
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FDA halts Bill Gates coronavirus testing program
By Tal Axelrod - 05/15/20
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/498104-fda-halts-bill-gates-coronavirus-testing-program
[EDITOR'S NOTE: See also the Federal history, documented here and elsewhere, about stopping Cascadian efforts to do widespread testing and alert others. This is intentional sabotage.]
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) halted a coronavirus testing program promoted by billionaire Bill Gates and Seattle health officials pending reviews.
The program sought to send test kits to the homes of people both healthy and sick to try to bring the country to the level of testing officials say is necessary before states can begin safely reopening. The program, which had already gone through thousands of tests, found dozens of cases that had been previously undiagnosed.
The Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network (SCAN) said on its website that the FDA had asked it to pause testing while it receives additional authorizations but maintained its procedures are safe.
The FDA "recently clarified its guidance for home-based, self-collected samples to test for COVID-19. We have been notified that a separate federal emergency use authorization (EUA) is required to return results for self-collected tests," SCAN said. "The FDA has not raised any concerns regarding the safety and accuracy of SCAN’s test, but we have been asked to pause testing until we receive that additional authorization."
The pause is emblematic of the fractured national response to the coronavirus, with federal officials proposing guidelines but leaving much of the implementation and administration of tests to states and localities.
Concerns have recently arisen over the reliability of coronavirus antibody tests, which can gauge if someone previously had COVID-19. However, the SCAN tests do not test for antibodies, and SCAN said it is working on getting its program up and running again.
“We are actively working to address their questions and resume testing as soon as possible,” SCAN said.
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Record number of COVID-19 cases reported Saturday in Wisconsin, with 502 infections
Natalie Brophy, Appleton Post-Crescent
Published 3:12 p.m. CT May 16, 2020
https://www.postcrescent.com/story/news/2020/05/16/wisconsin-coronavirus-record-number-new-cases-reported-dhs/5205710002/
More than 500 additional Wisconsinites have tested positive for coronavirus, the largest single-day increase in cases reported since the beginning of the pandemic.
The 502 new cases reported Saturday by the Department of Health Services came from a round of 6,051 COVID-19 tests that were processed. The percent of new tests that were positive for the virus was 8.3% — slightly higher than the average of around 6% from the previous six days.
This latest round of tests brings Wisconsin's total number of confirmed cases to 12,187, according to DHS. More than 134,200 people have tested negative for coronavirus as of Saturday and 453 people have died, eight more than reported Friday.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, 2,018 people have been hospitalized, which is around 17% of all positive cases. As of Saturday morning, 361 patients were hospitalized with COVID-19, according to the Wisconsin Hospital Association. Of those hospitalized with COVID-19, 182 are in the intensive care unit.
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Amid reports of White House clashes with CDC, experts raise alarms about lack of coronavirus screening at airports
Hunter Walker, White House Correspondent
Yahoo News
May 16, 2020
https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-screening-airports-144105500.html
WASHINGTON — As the nation begins to reopen amid the coronavirus pandemic, some people are looking to the skies — and experts don’t necessarily like what they see, arguing there are not enough safeguards in place to protect passengers and crew.
While air travel has fallen sharply due to the virus, the airports are open and planes are flying both domestically and internationally. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued travel guidelines encouraging air passengers to wear face coverings, “keep 6 feet of physical distance from others” and only board planes for essential travel. However, these guidelines are merely suggestions.
There is no requirement for masks, and there have been multiple reports of crowded conditions in airports and on planes, which have left passengers alarmed. The Transportation Security Administration, which screens passengers and luggage at airports, has also experienced over 560 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and six deaths from the illness.
Despite these concerns, there are currently no coronavirus screening procedures for domestic air travelers, and a congressional investigation has also raised questions about the level of screening being conducted for international passengers. Speaking in the Oval Office on April 28, President Trump told reporters his administration is working on implementing a procedure for temperature checks and COVID-19 tests for air travelers.
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House Republican introduces bill to give meatpacking plants liability shield
By Alex Gangitano - 05/15/20
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/498064-house-republican-introduces-bill-to-give-meat-packing-plants-liability-shield
Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.) introduced legislation on Friday that would provide liability protections for meat processing facilities mandated by President Trump to remain open.
The Protecting Protein Production and Consumers Access Act would protect companies from lawsuits if they are not caused by criminal misconduct, gross negligence by the facility, reckless misconduct or conscious indifference to worker safety guidelines.
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Sweden’s Relaxed Approach to COVID-19 Isn’t Working
With few restrictions and no tracing of the disease’s spread, the government is relying upon Swedish character and traditions to see it through the pandemic. But behind this exceptionalism lies a worrying social compact between state and citizen.
Adele Lebano
8 May 2020
http://bostonreview.net/politics/adele-lebano-sweden%E2%80%99s-relaxed-approach-covid-19-isn%E2%80%99t-working
As an Italian living in Sweden, I have become accustomed to surprise by the many ways that Sweden is different—not just from Italy, but from its own reputation as an exceptionally virtuous country and a model society. This double estrangement is especially dismaying during this public health crisis.
By letting its citizens live their life mostly as usual, the Swedish government’s soft, non-interventional approach to the pandemic has challenged the paths undertaken by other countries and the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO). Sweden has decided to go lagom—a Swedish word that means “just right,” neither too much nor too little; few restrictions have been imposed; people are mostly asked to keep clean and physically distant. Sweden has also decided not to track the disease’s spread and their testing lags far behind other countries. This may be a realistic choice in anticipation of a lockdown that would be unsustainable for people and for the economy, but it still feels odd. The “right” response to the pandemic has been elusive, but different local approaches do say something about our conceptions of politics and society—about our ideas of life and attachments and the links between private values and public choices.
...
According to Our World in Data, Sweden recorded 812 new confirmed cases on April 25, the highest daily count so far, which helped push the total number of confirmed cases over 20,000 by April 30. As of May 8, in nearby Denmark, a much more densely populated country, the number is 10,083; in Norway, 7995; and in Finland, 5673. The total confirmed COVID-19 deaths in Sweden has passed 3000, a relatively small number when compared to Italy, the United Kingdom, or the United States, but much worse than Sweden’s neighbors: Denmark (512), Norway (209), and Finland (255). Sweden’s 301.1 COVID-19 deaths per million people—compared to countries that chose a lockdown—does not reassure: United States (228.61); Denmark (88.74); Norway (35.97); Finland (35.92). Half of the deaths occurred in nursing homes.
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Alaska legislator compares pandemic safety measures at Capitol to Nazi treatment of Jews
James Brooks
15 May 2020
https://www.adn.com/politics/alaska-legislature/2020/05/15/alaska-legislator-compares-pandemic-safety-measures-at-capitol-to-nazi-treatment-of-jews/
JUNEAU — A Nikiski Republican lawmaker opposed to pandemic safety measures at the Alaska Capitol compared them to Nazi Germany’s labeling of Jews in an email exchange Friday with fellow members of the Alaska House of Representatives.
When lawmakers return to Juneau on Monday, they will be required to undergo a health screening. Those who pass the screening will be asked to wear a sticker.
“How about an arm band that won’t fall off like a sticker will?” Rep. Ben Carpenter wrote in a message copied to all 40 members of the Alaska House. “If my sticker falls off, do I get a new one or do I get public shaming too? Are the stickers available as a yellow Star of David?”
Two Jewish members of the Legislature immediately responded, again copying all members of the House.
“Ben, This is disgusting. Keep your Holocaust jokes to yourself,” wrote Rep. Grier Hopkins, D-Fairbanks.
Rep. Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage, said, “I don’t think a tag that we’re cleared to enter the building is akin to being shipped to a concentration camp. It’s more akin to needing a boarding pass when you get through TSA. This is that.”
...
Carpenter said fear over the virus is now a bigger threat than the virus itself and could cause Alaskans to sacrifice liberties. He said he feels Alaska is headed down a slippery slope and that while the state is far from Nazi Germany’s extermination camps, those didn’t start out overnight.
“Can you or I — can we even say it is totally out of the realm of possibility that COVID-19 patients will be rounded up and taken somewhere?” he said. “People want to say Hitler was a white supremacist. No. He was fearful of the Jewish nation, and that drove him into some unfathomable atrocities.”
